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In 2011, Cornell's Gorge Safety Committee created an on-going plan to increase the awareness of potential gorge dangers along with measures to make them safer. These efforts look to have been successful. Read more in the October 8 Cornell Daily Sun article "Cornell Sees Decrease in Gorge-Related Deaths."

Described by TIME magazine as a “hero for the planet”, Dr. Peter Raven, President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, will explore how the living world that supports us along with all other living organisms is at serious risk owing to a combination of human population growth, rising consumption rates, and the use of often inappropriate technology.

Dr. Raven’s lecture will address the fact that species are becoming extinct at an increasing rate because of habitat destruction, spread of invasive species, and global climate change. Steps that must be taken to reach global sustainability and social justice are drastic. But Dr. Raven will suggest strategies that, if employed, will save the maximum number of species while achieving a world in which conditions will allow their survival and the perpetuation of Earth’s living systems.

Having received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2000, Dr. Raven champions worldwide research to preserve endangered plants. He also served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Among the numerous awards Dr. Raven has received are the prestigious International Prize for Biology from Japan, the U.S. National Medal of Science, and the International Cosmos Prize. He has held Guggenheim and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowships.The author of numerous books and reports, both popular and scientific, Raven co-wrote Biology of Plants, an internationally best-selling textbook, now in its sixth edition. He also co-authored Environment, a leading textbook on the environment.

As part of Cornell Plantations Fall Lecture Series, this lecture is free and open to the public. Parking can be found in the parking garage located on Hoy Road on the campus of Cornell University.

Cornell Plantations is many things to many people. What does Cornell
Plantations mean to Cornell faculty, staff and students and Ithaca
community members? Click here to view a 3-1/2 minute video to find out.

White-tailed deer were once so rare that their sightings merited newspaper headlines. These days, "there's no woody plant between my ankle and chest," says Todd Bittner, director of the Plantations' natural areas. With developments encroaching into what were once woodlands, humans and deer come into constant conflict. At Cornell, researchers are attacking the deer management problem head-on. Read more about this program and Plantations role in the recent issue of Cornells Alumni Magazine, "The Buck Stops Here"

Cornell Plantations is seeking an exceptional individual to serve as the
Elizabeth Newman Wilds Director to lead Cornell University’s botanical
gardens, arboretum and natural areas, Upstate New York’s premier public
garden and one of Ithaca’s major cultural institutions. Read more here.

Childhood memories and knowing what it takes to maintain a historic building inspired a major gift from Plantations donors Bob Shaw ’63, MS ’64 and Anne Meads Shaw ’64. Their planned gift will establish a future endowment fund to support the upkeep of the Lewis Education Building and infrastructure and botanical collections on Comstock Knoll.

Bob Shaw grew up in Forest Home, on the outskirts of the Cornell campus. He and his brothers attended the nearby elementary school, where Bob remembers playing among the tall pines on Comstock Knoll, sledding down the hillside in the winter, and playing baseball in the school yard in the summer. Their parents worked at the university: R. William Shaw PhD ’34 was a professor and longtime chair of the astronomy department, and Charlotte Throop Shaw MA ’36 worked in the music department.

After the school closed in 1964, the building became Plantations’ headquarters. The old playground was dismantled, but the gravel yard remained for ten years before the Robison Herb Garden was built there. Today the old school is home to our education and visitor services staff, and is named for Plantations’ first executive director, Richard Lewis.

Bob and Anne first started making gifts to Plantations in memory of his mother, who enjoyed seeing our botanical collections and gardens develop. As their 50th reunions were approaching, they began thinking about how they might do more to create a permanent source of support for Plantations. “The Lewis building and the properties around it were an important part of my early years,” says Bob. “Anne and I want to be sure that Plantations has the funds needed to maintain and preserve them over the years ahead.”

Over the next four years, Bob and Anne will add new gifts to the charitable remainder unitrust they’ve already established at Cornell. They receive income from the trust for their lifetimes, and after their deaths the remainder will be divided to support the College of Engineering and to establish the “Robert and Anne Shaw Plantations Endowment.” We will use the payout from their endowment to maintain or improve the Lewis Building and the pathways, stairs, summer house, or other infrastructure on Comstock Knoll. The fund may also support other landscape improvements or enhance the knoll’s botanical collections.

Planned gifts can secure your future—and Plantations!

Gift planning can help you meet your financial goals while also providing Cornell Plantations with vital, long-term resources. From a simple bequest in your will to life-income agreements that can help secure your retirement, there are a wide range options.

For many donors, gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts provide the security of having a continued income stream for themselves or heirs, and significant tax savings. The charitable IRA rollover is also an option for 2013, and if you are 70-1/2 or older, you could move up to $100,000 from your IRA directly to Plantations without paying income taxes on the money.

For more information on how you can support Cornell Plantations with a planned gift, contact Beth Anderson.

English professor Thomas Hill will deliver Cornell Plantations’ 2013
William H. and Jane Torrence Harder Lecture Aug. 28 at 5:30 p.m. in Call
Auditorium, Kennedy Hall and will be followed by a garden party in Plantations botanical garden.

Hill has been known to take his students outside to lie down and stare at the trees, or to cart new students from Risley Hall to the Cornell Orchards to make sure they get there sometime during college.

“A tree is not simply a natural object that we chop down to harvest its wood or eat its nuts,” Hill said. “But in literature a tree is a larger symbol of the world, in both Christian and pre-Christian writing.”

Our annual Fall Lecture Series begins on August 28 and will run every other Wednesday until November 6, 2013. The first lecture will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall and will be followed by a garden party in the botanical gardens of Cornell Plantations. All remaining lectures will take place in Statler Hall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.

The lecture series will feature talks about Pagan trees, trendy new plants, weedless gardening, conserving species, nature wars, and plant medicines by Cornell English professor Thomas D. Hill; Klyn Nurseries President Bill Hendricks; President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden Peter Raven; renowned gardener and author Lee Reich; acclaimed journalist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and author of Nature Wars: the Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, Jim Sterba, and senior research associate at Cornell University Manuel Aregullin. The Fall Lecture Series is free and open to the public.

Cornell University English Professor, Thomas Hill kicks off the series with a lecture entitled Pagan and Christian Trees: From Ambrose to “Juniper Tree.” Professor Hills’ lecture will focus on the importance of trees in Christian thought and will be a literary history of some spiritual, cosmological and real trees in the literature of medieval and early modern Europe.

“Every year we work to try and bring interesting and dynamic speakers to share with our community,” stated Sonja Skelly, director of education at Cornell Plantations. “This years line-up is no exception! We have some of the world’s leading authorities coming to Ithaca. We hope the Cornell and Ithaca communities will join us for these exciting lectures.”

Whether you are growing herbs in pots or in your garden bed, many of the plants we like to grow are native to the Mediterranean Region and prefer soil that is well drained. Our interpretation coordinator, Sarah Fiorello, designed a new interactive display to demonstrate the benefit of soil amendments. View this two-minute video of Sarah uses the display to show how you can easily amend your soil for better drainage.

Cornell Plantations has recently completed its yearlong process of enhancements to our visitor services in the F. R. Newman Arboretum with the installation of a self-guided audio-visual tour. In addition to this self-guided tour, Cornell Plantations has installed new interpretive and way-finding signs throughout to help visitors better orient themselves and to learn more about these unique collections. These enhancements were made possible by a $20K grant from the Stanley Smith Horticulture Trust received in January 2012.

These enhancements help Plantations to better tell our story to the tens of thousands of visitors who enter our gates every year. From learning about the striped maple (Acer pennsylvanicum) a small tree with distinct vertical white stripes on its bark, which is also called moosewood, the namesake of a nearby famous restaurant; to learning that the much loved Sculpture Garden was not intended to survive past the year it was constructed in 1962, visitors will now have a much fuller and richer understanding of the amazing collections that can be found in the rolling hills of the F. R. Newman Arboretum.

Since the completion of the Arboretum in 1981, Plantations has had limited visitor information in the arboretum to explain to visitors the importance of the plant collections found there. This grant allowed for expanded services that include new signs and mobile phone audio-visual tours to communicate the significance of the key plant collections within the 150-acre arboretum, and reveal how researchers from Cornell and around the world use these collections for scientific study.

“The aim of all interpretation in the arboretum is to emphasize the significance of plant diversity, and how plants strongly affect human well-being,” stated Sarah Fiorello, interpretation coordinator at Cornell Plantations. “Before these interpretive upgrades in the arboretum, many visitors viewed the space as a beautifully manicured park, not as an arboretum -- with significant plant collections that are used for educational and research purposes. It’s our hope that these visitor enhancements will help bring a fuller awareness to our visitors.”

The collections located in the F.R. Newman Arboretum include nut trees, crabapples, oaks, maples, shrubs, and urban trees. There are also specialty gardens found in the arboretum that include the Zucker Shrub Collection and the Treman Woodland Walk.

To listen to the audio tour, visit our F.R. Newman Arboretum page and browse the collection list. Once a collection is selected, click on the audio icon to listen to the short audio clip.

About Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust:The Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust was created in 1970 by May Smith, in honor of her late husband. The Trust supports education and research in ornamental horticulture, primarily in North and South America. Grants up to $20,000 are typically made to botanical gardens, arboreta, and universities.

Cornell Plantations is many things to many people. What does Cornell
Plantations mean to Cornell faculty, staff and students and Ithaca
community members? Click here to view a 3-1/2 minute video to find out.

In the July 22 Cornell Chronicle article, “Plantations seeks to control invasive plants and pests,” natural areas director Todd Bittner paints of picture of what it takes to curb the spread of the invasive insect hemlock woolly adelgid, and countless invasive plants that threaten the health of over 3,400 acres of Plantations natural areas.

Chris Wien, Cornell Plantations interim director, is a professor of horticulture who experiments with cut flowers to determine which varieties hold the most promise for the state’s $6.3 billion nursery industry. He believes he’s found a winner in the pineapple lily (Eucomis). Read more about his research in the July 25 Cornell Chronicle article, "Pineapple lily could help N. Y. nursery industry bloom."

Daniel McPheeters' "Botanical Mandalas" are on display during July and August. For the past few years Daniel has taken photographs of flowers and foliage and used the computer to turn them into “Botanical Mandalas” using a technique called “digital collage” to combine images.

Plantations Road at Judd Falls Road will be closed from July 8th - August 15th. Cornell Plantations' botanical garden and Nevin Welcome Center REMAIN OPEN and can be accessed from Plantations Road at Forest Home Drive. For information or questions, please call 607-255-2400.

Flash flood watch: With the rain we've received and the potential for more showers, thunderstorms and torrential rainfall, all members of the community are reminded that gorges and trails may be dangerous during storms. Remember to stay on trails or within designated areas, swimming is prohibited, and do not walk on closed trails or other restricted areas marked by fences, gates and railings. If there is any possibility of a flash flood, move immediately to higher ground. Do not wait for instructions to move. Please check the Special Conditions page for further updates.

Horticulture professor Chris Wien will serve as interim director of Cornell Plantations while the university searches for a replacement for Don Rakow, who announced his resignation on May 22. Wien, who started July 1, previously served as acting director of the Plantations from July 2006 to January 2007. Wien received his master’s degree from Cornell in 1967 and his Ph.D in 1971, joined the Department of Vegetable Crops as a postdoctoral fellow in 1971, and returned as assistant professor in 1979, after working abroad as a research scientist studying grain legume physiology in Nigeria. He served as chair of the Department of Fruit and Vegetable Science, then the Department of Horticulture, from 1996-2002. His research focus has been the production of cut flowers and herbaceous perennials. He also leads outreach projects encouraging the use of high tunnels among both growers and in school gardens. And he has continued international work in Africa, working with smallholder horticulturists in Zimbabwe, and leading student trips through the Cornell International Institute of Food, Agriculture and Development’s SMART program.

Rakow, who joined Cornell Plantations more than 20 years ago, will return full time to the Department of Horticulture. Reflecting on his tenure, Rakow said: “Our growth, even through budget limitations and challenging economic climates, has certainly been among my greatest satisfactions. For so much of this, I credit Plantations’ amazing staff and our incredibly generous donors and advisors.”

“Don’s leadership has been a key part of the transformation of Cornell Plantations in the last two decades. I am grateful for his expertise, enthusiasm and partnership,” said Kathryn Boor, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.